Field of the Invention
The invention relates to greeting cards, and, in particular, to methods for automating greeting-card delivery.
Description of the Related Art
The process of selecting, purchasing, and mailing physical greeting cards is currently fragmented, inefficient, inconvenient, and exorbitant.
The current process used for selecting, purchasing, and mailing physical greeting cards through in store purchases (i.e. brick and mortar stores such as a drugstore) or through the Internet (i.e. an online greeting card store) for preset dated or expected reoccurring occasions (e.g. birthday, anniversary, Christmas) or unexpected, non-reoccurring occasions (e.g. get well, sympathy, congratulations) utilizes a cumbersome, inconvenient, expensive, inefficient, and repetitious process repeated from beginning to end for each greeting-card sender to greeting-card recipient.
The existing systems of sending greeting cards are inefficient, inconvenient, repetitious, expensive, and cumbersome.
While the greeting card industry is limited to brick-and-motor stores or online selection and ordering of greeting cards in an inventory to the sender, “Web 2.0” applications have been created for other businesses. The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups, and folksonomies.
The Greeting Cards and Other Publishing in the U.S. industry comprise publishers that primarily publish greeting cards in print or electronic form. Some companies also publish products such as postcards, calendars, coloring books, yearbooks, and more.
The Greeting Cards and Other Publishing in the U.S. industry is declining rapidly as consumers shift to paperless substitutes. Revenue for greeting card, day planner, calendar, yearbook, and similar publishers is falling because consumers are increasingly using e-cards, e-mail, and social networking sites. Similarly, consumers are switching to online calendars that are easily shared with friends and coworkers, instead of the traditional wall calendars and day planners that this industry publishes. Low disposable income and a dip in business spending hastened this shift to cheaper digital alternatives during the past five years. As a result, industry revenue fell at a 6.0% annualized rate during the past five years to $5.5 billion in 2012. In 2012, an anticipated increase in consumer spending is expected to slow the revenue decline to 0.2%.
In response to a contracting market, companies in the industry are consolidating. Major company American Greetings Corporation made two significant acquisitions in 2009, buying Recycled Paper Greetings Inc. and PAPYRUS, and merging their operations to boost profitability. In early 2012, major company ACCO Brands Corporation acquired MeadWestvaco Corporation's industry operating segment, which was considered a major company prior to this merger. MeadWestvaco had already been consolidating its operations in-house to cut costs, and this merger is expected to further boost industry profit. As a result, IBISWorld estimates that industry profit will expand in 2012 to 16.7% of revenue. Meanwhile, consolidation and exits due to shrinking demand will also result in a 5.1% five-year annualized contraction in the number of firms to 946 in 2012, compared to 1,227 in 2007.
IBISWorld anticipates that consumer spending declines on industry products will continue during the next five years. The increasing proliferation of smartphones and tablets will provide a growing share of the population with cheaper and more efficient alternatives to industry products. Average unit selling prices will also continue to decrease due to this competition, which will further hurt industry revenue. The anticipated boost in demand, as disposable income recovers, will help to slow the deterioration of industry operations during the five years to 2017. Still, IBISWorld projects that revenue will decline at an annualized five-year rate of 4.0% to $4.5 billion in 2017.
Hallmark and American Greetings are major brick-and-motor greeting card producers. Both businesses share the weakness that they are highly entrenched, large manufacturers with high overhead that are reliant upon “brick and mortar” store sales. Both have inefficient distribution where greeting card company must ship product to, and share sales and profit margins with, drug stores (e.g., Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, etc.). Both use supply manufacturing, which is based on projecting product demand and leads to waste in excessive inventory. This results in a high-end product cost for consumers. In-store cards average about $3.00 to $4.00 per card. Consumers must be inconvenienced to physically drive (e.g., fuel, time, money, opportunity cost) to a physical location for each and every occasion.
Existing online retailers of greeting cards such as moonpig.com, cardstore.com, treat.com, greetingcarduniverse.com, have disadvantages compared to the method and systems according to invention. Most of these companies do not own their content (greeting cards and copyright), but license their content from other artists and greeting card companies leading to shared revenue and profit arrangements for licensing agreements. Because they do not own their own greeting card content like Hallmark, and American Greetings, they are at a competitive pricing disadvantage to distributors who own their own content. These companies all use a similar traditional “online store” model where customers need to first remember an occasion by reminder (e.g., Facebook, calendar, email); then must browse, select, personalize the subject card through adding text and design; address; mail; and purchase (checkout cart internet model) for each occasion and each recipient repetitively. These companies have similar pricing models averaging between $3.00 to $4.00 per card, plus postage.
Existing postcard services are based on users posting photographs and generating keepsakes. Example companies are Apple Inc., (greeting cards) Postagram, Postcards on the Run (postcards). These businesses are Exclusively photometric-based models. They have limited “real” greeting card content by “do it yourself” card creation using pictures and texts on iPhone and iPad and emailing to the company to print and mail a “picture with text,” masquerading as a greeting card. Customers must remember every occasion through reminder (e.g., Facebook, calendar, email), and personalize each card through photo selection, adding text, and emailing to company. Pricing is high—Apple charges $2.99, including postage, per card.